What’s Alexa?

Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Tap is a hands-free speaker you control with your voice and uses Alexa. Ask Alexa to play music, hear the news, check weather, control your smart home, and hear Ripley’s Weird Minute.

To listen, visit Alexa Skills and say “Alexa, enable Ripley’s Weird Minute.“ After you have enabled the skill, say “Alexa, what’s my Flash Briefing?” or “Alexa, what’s in the news?”, and just like that, you have added 60 seconds of weird news to your day!

Ripley’s will be pushing fresh content six days a week, uploading Monday through Friday, and adding a special weekend edition on Saturday.

From 1903 to 1943, millions of people flocked to view the world’s first incubators. However, they were not visiting hospitals, but a Coney Island sideshow attraction. During the attraction’s 40-year run, the lives of 6,500 children were saved, leading to the opening of a preemie ward, and incubators, at Cornell’s New York Hospital in 1941.

Are cheerleaders more your speed? Before the 1900s, all cheerleaders were men. Burly men would perform stunts and show displays of strength, making cheerleaders the pinnacle of masculinity, on par with the athletes of the burgeoning sport of football.

Don’t believe, me? Here are a few famous people you probably didn’t know were cheerleaders: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. Seems like cheerleading and politics go hand in hand.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not! is part of the Ripley Entertainment Inc. (www.ripleys.com) family of worldwide attractions, the global leader in location-based entertainment. More than 14 million people visit its 95-plus attractions in 12 countries each year. In addition to its 32 Believe It or Not! Odditoriums, the Orlando, Florida-based company has publishing, licensing and broadcast divisions that oversee projects including the syndicated Believe It or Not! television show, best-selling books and the popular syndicated cartoon strip, Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, that still runs daily in 42 countries. Ripley Entertainment is a Jim Pattison Company, the third-largest privately held company in Canada.